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SHOT ON Aset made up largely of painted lines on the floor, Lars Von Trier’s typically innovative Dogville proved the most audacious, stimulating film of the competition so far,writes Fiona Morrow.

Nicole Kidman plays Grace, a woman running from the mob who finds herself in the last township before the Rocky Mountains. Stuck, she throws herself on the mercy of the townspeople, encouraged by Tom (Paul Bettany) to prove themselves able to accept a stranger.

As the community’s collective prejudice begins to seep out, Grace becomes first skivvy, then slave. The men take to her bed, the women take against her; even her saviour, Tom, must face his own philosophical weakness.

Shot as a remarkably imaginative piece of filmed theatre, Dogville grips from the opening aerial shot of the extraordinary set. Kidman blows her Hollywood image firmly out of the water, proving herself an actor of great versatility. From the rest of the starry cast – Bettany, Chloe Sevigny, Lauren Bacall, James Caan – there isn’t a wrong note.

A bold, sometimes didactic appraisal of ignorance, prejudice and the creation of hatred, Dogville is a powerful thesis for the argument that violence begets only more violence. A staggeringly powerful closing credit sequence juxtaposing images from the American depression and war and poverty around the world with David Bowie’s Young Americans is simply brilliant.

A true original, Von Trier has picked up the Palme twice already: this could well be his hat-trick.